Do not expect answers from me in the future, as i do not plan to be posting in this forum. This is simply to clear alot of things up.
1.
Interesting... I always thought this was a DBP-programs only forum though.
There are two reasons for this topic being here. First is that the topic blurb says nothing about showing off only your own creations, nor about it being for DarkBASIC-Based only Programs.
Second is that this is the first Fully-Compatible DarkBASIC Professional .FX Composition program. RenderMonkey and ShaderWorkshop are good for prototyping, however this application will work first time on everything you export.
If it doesn't, then please let me know so that the next release can be improved. There are still slight bugs which are outlined in the documentation, however non which are not common knowlage throughout the development communities.
2.
Do these shaders work on any card, or are they NVidia exclusive?
That depends entirely on how you program them. FX Composer supports all current specifications that the Cg Toolkit 1.2 does.
Unfortunately it does not yet support the Radeon Rxx specification for the Radeon 9-Series VPU. This is due to ATI not wishing to share this specification with NVIDIA.
3.
The real funny thing about this application is that Nvidia's own Cg shader language is not supported. So, I guess that pretty much cinches the fact that Microsoft's HLSL is the new standard shader language.
Actually the FX Composer requires the Cg Toolkit 1.1/1.2 installed to run. As it uses CgFX runtime for it's real-time rendering.
CgFX is specifically designed to be interchangeable with Microsoft's HLSL and SGI's GLSL .FX formats.
NVIDIA are not forgetting or dropping support for any of thier format, they are simply extending thier current support for DirectX9.
4.
This is basically OpenGL versus Direct3D round two. Programmers will use one or the others, and right now for Windows and XBOX game development, HLSL is the most used.
I'm sorry but this is incorrect as well. Cg and HLSL were developed alongside each other, the only main difference between them is how you include them into the API you are using.
Cg covers DirectX8, DirectX9 and OpenGL; Whereas HLSL simply covers DirectX9.
CgFX format is fully-compatible with HLSL format, which allows it to maintain it's multiplatform abilities whilst also maintaining a native compatibility with DirectX9.
Right now, it is actually only Windows developers that use HLSL. X-Box, Playstation2, GameCube and Macintosh developers are using Cg more.
Simply because you are capable of Multiplatforming for the Console which most console games end up doing. When HLSL is used they have to redesign Shaders again for that machine.
Cg allows a generic template which works universally via OpenGL.
5.
While I would prefer that Dark BASIC directly expand its list of simplified commands for shader implementation since the whole purpose of Dark BASIC is shield programmers from having to do all of this heavy lifting (and thinking), at least with a tool like this one from Nvidia, I can have it write HLSL shaders for me which I can plug into Dark BASIC.
I'm afraid you seem to have the wrong idea about this product. It allows the Rapid Development of Shaders including a visual representation of them as you work, it in no means will write them for you. You still require some knowlage of FX to be able to use this. Thanks to the NVIDIA staff and beta testers however you do have an extensive library and help file that will guide you through creation.
There are currently game specific examples and tutorials in development, which might be released by the next development.
As I have mentioned this is just in response to this product and I hope the answers have helped people.
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